Author: Doris

It has been a beautiful weekend and also kind of a difficult weekend for us. It was beautiful outside this whole weekend, in the high 60s and just lovely. Considering just a week ago, I was writing about the snow day, it’s a little like a miracle.

Jeremy has been suffering from a bad case of hives this weekend. He always gets hives after a routine cold/flu and often times it is worse than the original illness. I promised not to post photos of this bout of hive-y-ness, but his whole face was bloated enough for him to look like another person (I was thinking Mike Ditka). He spent much of the weekend in bed downing Benedryl trying to avoid the trip to the urgent care place which we (actually he and my parents – who were trying to convince him to go to the ER instead of the urgent care place) ended up going to this morning at 10 am. A prescription of prednisone later, he is deflating nicely but still very itchy.

Vince’s birthday party part deux (aka, the school friends party) was at Mr. Cheese’s house Saturday at lunch. He (Vince, not Mr. Cheese) could not have been more excited. It was a little trying for me, my wingman – Jeremy was already very swollen and feeling lousy – so I was trying to fly solo. I hate flying solo at Mr. Cheese’s.

Rena & I both are out of our jobs. As a consequence, our monthly mortgage payment is certainly above 31% our monthly gross income. Therefore, I have filled out the request to see whether Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac owns our mortgage loan.

HOPE, IT IS!

If it is, we are qualified and ready to apply. If we get any relief out of our (everyone’s) 75 billions in each payment, we will certainly contribute to his administration’s Stimulus Plan in a big way.

Note: Lenders must agree to reduce the loan payments to 38 percent of a borrower’s monthly income. After that, the government and lender split the cost of bringing the payment down to 31 percent

Yes, it snowed. The kids got a snow day. I got to work only 45 minutes late, not to shabby!

I’m watching Celebrity Apprentice right now. Clint Black is playing on behalf of the International Rett Syndrome Foundation. The first challenge is to make cupcakes and sell them on the streets of NYC. It’s a classic boys vs. girl team – and the boys do not look good. Hold on, they just put on a tease that the girls’ cupcakes fall while cooking in the oven! Horrors!

Tonight we had a family party to celebrate Vince’s 7th birthday.

We did a cookie stack instead of a cake because my neighbor just started a small business out of her house where she makes these beautiful cookies:

After two weekends of being gone from the house, we finally have a relatively quiet weekend at home. Today was filled with laundry and ironing, straightening and decluttering – it is amazing how fast the house can get to be unruly and a little out of control.

We’ve all been a little under the weather this week with Edda and me the worst of the bunch. It was one of those lingering winter colds where you feel kind of lousy for a long time, much longer than you think you should feel bad, but then it’s also too mild to stay home from school or work. I felt pretty terrible coming home on Friday night on the Metro and thought the weekend was shot, but it turns out, I feel pretty good today.

My husband is obsessed (really obsessed) with reducing our carbon footprint. Our conversations may start in many places (what’s for dinner? how was your day?) and will end up at – “You know, there are now fluorescent light bulbs that look just like a regular light bulb – they squeezed the whole coil into the bulb!” One night this week, he could not sleep because he wanted to be awake at the time the furnace turned on to see if the auxiliary heater would turn on. (Apparently this auxiliary heater is EVIL).

He spent serious time this week talking to heating contractors about our heating system, which they all agree is brand new and totally the most efficient on the market – everything is well insulated and well installed. He wanted to take the next step and install a geothermal heating system meaning that they rip out your backyard and put in 1000 feet of pipes filled with some sort of fluid that makes the whole system more efficient. Right now, we could get back $20,000 in tax rebates for this “green” installation. So Jeremy really, really wanted it to be close to $20,000. I said no way was it going to be even close – I said it was going to be at least $40,000.

Get this, the quote was $55,000. Crazy. We are totally NOT going to get the geothermal system installed.

Things I should be doing:
Going to bed early.
Watching the Obama address.
Filing medical bills.

Things that I am doing:
Watching the movie Penelope.
Staying up late to wait for Jeremy.
Eating banana bread.

It always seems to be New Jersey that we are traveling to. This past weekend, we went to the NJ Rett Clinic over at Rutgers University. This is the fourth time we’ve gone and we are pros now. I remember the first time we went, I was just so amazed at seeing so many girls with Rett Syndrome all in one place.

Here we are at a hotel the night before – relishing in hotel TV. Everyone wanted to watch HGTV. They all are fascinated by room makeovers.

TV continues to enthrall the next morning.

Finally at the clinic, we were in and out in less than 2 hours. They do the most complete and consistent body measurements that we have on Edda and then they ask how Edda’s doing and then we ask questions.

Jeremy is completely stymied by the fact that we may be buying a minivan in the near future. For 5 years now, it has not be unusual for us to drive 8 to 12 hours (usually to Upstate NY) in our trusty Honda Accord with the four of us and the dog. Ruby is a patient dog and usually spends the trip in the footwell being kicked by a child. OK, this makes it sound like we’re going to buy a minivan so the dog will be more comfortable, but I swear that’s not the case.

Edda is getting heavier all the time, Jeremy and I are pretty strong and can still lift her, but there is no way either of our mothers can lift Edda and I can feel the little twinge in my back when I lift Edda in and out of the car. We spent part of the weekend looking a turnout seating for Edda (which I have to say is fantastically cool) and thinking about what vehicle to put it into.

The turnout seat salesman said that 90% of the seats go into minivans, and I’m like, OK, let’s get the Toyota Sienna or the Honda Odyssey and be done with it. Jeremy looks at the 19 mpg on the highway that the minivans gets and gets all concerned. Remember, he is a professional environmentalist. All day he thinks about how to convince Americans to use less fuel, he talks to the EPA, he does his cute little gas calculations and comes home and talks to me about it all the time. So, I think we are going to go to a bunch of different car dealers and looking at some other, smaller, more fuel efficient cars. This is going to take some time. I hope Edda isn’t 75 pounds by the time we decide, but whatever, maybe by then the minivans will all be hybrid and get 47 mpg on the highway and it will all be moot.